Public Sector Strike(s)

julieq

This offer is NOT a race to the bottom. Have you actually read it? Accrued benefits are retained, and it is a massively better offer than generally available anywhere in the private sector. If there's any misinformation it's from the union side. These are the Hutton recommendations in any case, so quoting him in your support and then rejecting his conclusions when offered to you is pretty dumb.

And incidentally the cost of pension subsidies annually to the public sector is about £32B (and the offer maintains that more or less). As a point of comparison, the ENTIRE trident program costs £97B. The total accrued cost of the bank bailout is something of the order of £37B (and that may reduce). It is a MASSIVE commitment to the public sector. In 5 years you cost the taxpayer more than a trident program plus a bank bailout round - that's something to consider when you witter on about banks. Oh, and the tax contribution of the banks annually is about £58B, which equates to about 11% of total tax take. Without the banks you wouldn't have a prayer of getting your pension.

Deficits come from government spending, not banks, anyway. Having declared an end to boom and bust, this caught the Labour party by surprise because they had overcommitted massively in expanding the public sector. That WAS your employer's fault. You're now being offered a wonderful pension deal that happens to be not quite as good as it was, and you're still asking for more money. That's fine, but it's not unreasonable for you to contribute a great deal more if you want that.

Emy1501

misskool wrote: »

I work in higher education so have been affected by recent changes to USS and I'm funded by taxpayers.

In my case, my pension contributions have increased to 9% from 6% but what people fail to mention is that my employer (the government/university) contributes 13% so total contribution to a pension scheme is 22% of my salary. Find me a private sector pension that has such a large percentage of their salaries and I shall then complain of being robbed of my pension.

People working in the public sector seem to gloss over the fact that a good chunk of what they earn for their pensions is paid for by their employer.

And the public sector did cause the catastrophe by spending inordinate amounts of money it did not have. The government has a deficit because it doesn't know how to budget what money it has.

I have a final salary pension I pay in 5% so my employer must pay in between 10-15% as its based on 1/60th for every year you work. Its changed recently from a retirement age of 60-65 but the contributions have not. the last company I worked in I paid in 3 and they paid in 14% and the one before than was a final salary where you did not pay in anything. These are all private companies.

For me companies offer packages now rather than a basic wage and the type of pension offered come as part of that package. There people need the look at the overall package to decide whether those in the public sector are being over paid.

I can't see how its not a race to the bottom as clearly there are companies out there who offer decent pensions

ChiefGrasscutter

darich wrote: »

What's annoying for public sector staff is that employment contracts are being changed

Yet another example where the public sector seem to be on a different planet.

When I worked in the Engineering industry my contract of employment said various things and at among them was that the contract could be changed or terminated by giving three months notice.
On several occassions it was changed. I simply got a communication from H.Resources to state that benefit x in clause x.y.z was being removed as of date a/b/c being 3 months after the date of the said letter...
Same proceedure applied for pension contributions being increased or future not yet accumulated benefits reduced.
If I didn't like it I could of course give my 3 months notice of intention to leave and go and find a job somewhere else................

I think there was also a clause in the contract which said my contract could be changed with immediate effect and without any notice if the company was mandated by Government law or emergency powers edict to change the contract of all the company's employees.

julieq

It'd be a race to the bottom if the offer was a defined contribution scheme or no pension at all. That is the "bottom" Hutton was talking about. It's ridiculous to use this Hutton sound bite and then reject the offer he framed precisely to avoid a "race to the bottom", and it reflects quite scandalous misrepresentation by the Unions who in some cases appear to have told members they'd be better off in external schemes following the changes.

In fact it's a very good deal indeed. It's still a defined benefit scheme. It costs the employee very little in terms of what would be needed for an equivalent scheme based on a pension pot. Accrued benefits are retained, i.e. you have a final salary scheme for the years you've already worked.

Anyway the strike appears to have had very little impact. So here's to the next one I guess.

dizzie

darich wrote: »

I

..........and it wasn't the public sector that caused this catastrophe in the first place.

No, but neither did millions of private sector workers cause it either. I would say however, that the public sector grew immensely during the last Labour administration. This has caused a problem because the public sector needs to be paid for out of taxation. the public sector is therefore a net tax consumer.

For there to be any tax receipts in the coffers to pay for public services, we need tax generators - i.e. the profit making private sector. But the tax revenues are down, people in the private sector are being made redundant as companies pull in their belts. So funding the public sector becomes more of a strain on resources. Add to that the fact that welfare state's demand on the public purse is increasing as unemployment rises....and we're in a bit of a pickle.

Okay, its seems that they can "find" money for controversial things but contentious as this may be, it isn't "real money", we don't have those pound coins sat in a piggy bank somewhere - we're just "borrowing" more from someone else.

If we look at the situation in the Third World - what happened there? Those countries were offered money and they took it to improve their lot....but they bit off more than they could chew. The banks increased the interest rates and eventually, those countries did not have the resources to meet their creditor's demands. They have paid their original loan amounts back many times, but the debt remains (where it has not been written off) because of the crippling sums of interest. This is where long term poverty comes from.

I really do think that we should step outside the box and examine this situation from a wider perspective, rather than looking at the immediately apparent personal impact. If we don't, this country's debt will spiral out of all control, interest rates on government borrowing will snowball and the ordinary person will have to get used to a markedly lower standard of living.

I know a couple who came here from Poland to improve their lot. They had been living in one room with their children and decided to come to England to work so that they could eventually give their children a better life in Poland. They had left their kids in Poland with parents and it broke their hearts to do this, but they were desperate people. Poland is not "Third World" and it is not so far away...

...I use this example to illustrate that we take a lot for granted. So, it would be a good idea to give some thought - not to how bad things are....but to how bad they could get!

elantan

Does anyone know ( and I ask cause I don't) how often (or even have)have the public sector workers stood up publicly and declared that the private sector workers are getting a raw deal and should be supported ?

Emy1501

julieq wrote: »

It'd be a race to the bottom if the offer was a defined contribution scheme or no pension at all. That is the "bottom" Hutton was talking about. It's ridiculous to use this Hutton sound bite and then reject the offer he framed precisely to avoid a "race to the bottom", and it reflects quite scandalous misrepresentation by the Unions who in some cases appear to have told members they'd be better off in external schemes following the changes.

In fact it's a very good deal indeed. It's still a defined benefit scheme. It costs the employee very little in terms of what would be needed for an equivalent scheme based on a pension pot. Accrued benefits are retained, i.e. you have a final salary scheme for the years you've already worked.

Anyway the strike appears to have had very little impact. So here's to the next one I guess.

For me its a race to the bottom as when these reforms go through private companies will be able to offer worse pensions schemes than they do now. Then in 10 years time everyone will once a again say that public sector pensions are way better and they will reduced again and so on. I maybe be wrong but I read something recently tha suggested more than 50% of adults between 20-60 do not have pension so how long will it before the private sector call for no pensions at all.

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn

elantan wrote: »

Does anyone know ( and I ask cause I don't) how often (or even have)have the public sector workers stood up publicly and declared that the private sector workers are getting a raw deal and should be supported ?

LOL, You're getting desperate now, My union PCS is paid for by its members, why would they defend you? NUMPTY

julieq

Emy1501 wrote: »

For me its a race to the bottom as when these reforms go through private companies will be able to offer worse pensions schemes than they do now. Then in 10 years time everyone will once a again say that public sector pensions are way better and they will reduced again and so on. I maybe be wrong but I read something recently tha suggested more than 50% of adults between 20-60 do not have pension so how long will it before the private sector call for no pensions at all.

Well with that argument you could never reform public sector pensions, because you could argue the slightest change to the public sector would trigger a change in the private sector provision. In fact, as the private sector is pretty much all defined contributions now, there's not much further down to go anyway.

Honestly this race to the bottom stuff is a union smokescreen and nothing more. The existing scheme has been amended slightly so that slightly higher employee contributions are required, and final salary replaced with average salary which tends to favour the long term lower paid employees over the high flyers (which was why Hutton chose it). It's still an excellent deal. You would think from the rhetoric from the union side that pensions were being removed altogther.

julieq

Jack_Johnson_the_acorn wrote: »

LOL, You're getting desperate now, My union PCS is paid for by its members, why would they defend you? NUMPTY

Pleasant lot these public sector workers, aren't they?